Your website is the most important facet of your online store. Not having a great site and being active on social media can cost you sales, customers and even lead to a bad reputation. Think of your online store's site as a physical retails space; what do you want customers to see the minute they arrive? Chances are you don't want the place to appear cluttered, chaotic and impossible to navigate.
A clean, responsive design doesn't just make shopping easy for buyers; it can be optimized to attract even more shoppers through search engines.
But how exactly do you build your own online store? Well, aside from setting up a domain on a platform like Squarespace, you'll need to do some design work in order to create graphics that make your shop pop!
Here are three strategies for designing for your online store.
1. Get Connected to Social Media
Most site templates will allow you to link out to your store's social media pages through widgets. Set these up immediately and make sure they're easy to see; icon placement is incredibly important and can make the difference between engagement or not. Clients don't want to hunt around for social media links, but they also don't want to have things thrust in their face with obnoxiously large photos or intrusive pop-ups.
Design your social media pages to stand out on their own; custom Facebook and Twitter banners like the ones you can make with Adobe Spark are the look to strive for: crisp, clean, professional and personalized.
2. Define Your Value Proposition
When someone lands on your page, they need to know exactly what you're offering and why they should choose your store over another. Using programs like Adobe Spark, you can customize your header to display your products and a slogan that showcases what you're all about.
Make sure that your store's purpose is immediately evident upon visiting your site. There are plenty of ways to design your site's header, and you should play around with difference images, fonts and color schemes until you find a look that feels "right." Just make sure that you keep value proposition in mind when designing any media for your site.
3. Make Shopping Easy with Clickable Images
You only need basic knowledge of Photoshop and HTML to create clickable images with strong call-to-actions that make your site both easier to use and more likely to convert browsers into paying customers.
Use bright, well-defined images for placing objects in your cart and to distinguish among categories. Use whitespace to create contrast and draw viewers' attention to focal points like price and product descriptions.
Making Your Store Shine
Through conscious design and a bit of practice, you can create a beautiful online store for little startup and maintenance costs. Look for CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) images on sites like Pexels and Unsplash for free pictures to create eye-catching graphics.
Remember to always keep your value proposition — what your products are all about — in mind as you design; keeping customers at the forefront of your site's layout and style is a surefire way to guarantee successful creations.